1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a layout technique in an automatic layout system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, with shorter product life cycles due to increasing product variety and customers' trends towards personalized service due to the widespread use of the Internet, there has been a growing demand for customer relationship management (CRM) and one-to-one marketing. These approaches contribute to the increase in customer satisfaction so that potential customers can be found and customer retention is more likely.
The customer relationship management is a technique for increasing customer satisfaction by providing a customer with a response corresponding to the customer's needs based on a customer database so as to increase the profitability of a business, such as a corporation. The one-to-one marketing is one type of database marketing technique, in which age, gender, interests, preferences, and purchase histories of customers are stored in a database, and the information is analyzed to provide a customer with a proposal personalized to the customer's need. The typical application of the one-to-one marketing is variable printing. Recently, with the advance of desktop publishing (DTP) technology and widespread use of digital print apparatuses, a variable print system that personalizes a document and prints it for each customer has been developed. Accordingly, there has been a growing need for a document in which contents whose amounts vary depending on each customer are appropriately laid out.
In known variable print systems, layout frames (also referred to as “containers”) are generated on a document, the content in each container is associated with a record and a field of a database that satisfy predetermined conditions. By associating the database with the layout, the variable print can be achieved.
However, the size of a container to which text and images are inserted is fixed. Accordingly, if content data larger than the size of the container in the database is inserted into the container, the text overlaps and clipping of images occurs. By contrast, if the size of the content data is smaller than the container size, a white space is generated in the container.
To solve these problems, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 discloses a technology in which, when the size of a character area becomes large, the size of the adjacent area is reduced. As a character is input to the character area, the size of the character area is increased. Also, the size of an area adjacent to the character area is reduced.
Additionally, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 discloses a technology in which a plurality of product information items (product records) is arranged in a layout area on a page.
In this technology, a master component (corresponding to a sub template in this specification) including layouts (e.g., arrangement of a product name, an image, and a price) is prepared first. A specific master component is set for each product information item. Subsequently, data for the product information item (e.g., a product name, an image, and a price) are arranged in predetermined areas in the master component. Thereafter, the data are sequentially arranged in specified locations of layout areas on a page.
The technology according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 discusses that the character area is increased as text is input. However, when the size of the character area is increased, the adjacent area is reduced to maintain a spacing therebetween. Accordingly, as the input amount of the text increases, the adjacent area disadvantageously continues to be reduced.
In addition, the technology according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 does not take into consideration a variable print system that generates a personalized document for each customer by inserting the content data into the area while associating a database with each area.
Furthermore, the technology according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 has a possibility that a specified page to be laid out cannot contain an image component block in which data of the records are inserted depending on the number of the records to be arranged in the layout area. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 describes a technology in which, when the page to be laid out spans multiple pages, an image component block that cannot be contained in one page is automatically arranged on the subsequent page.
However, according to this technology described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216, even one image component block arranged on the subsequent page requires the generation of a new page. Consequently, the new page contains only the one image component block and a large amount of white space area. Thus, the appearance of the page is degraded. Furthermore, this may cause print costs to be higher than necessary.